Why Do Independent Films Have Such A Limited ROI?

The one thing that really helps these numbers become less daunting is the fact that no indie filmmaker is having to come up with 3 mil of their own money. Show investors that you have a solid plan for ROI, and they will give you the money (sometimes, if they like you).

So what I'm saying is that the guy who made a $100,000 film, and the guy that made a 3 million dollar film both started out with 100k. One just spent a lot more time on business, investment, and marketing.

Once you realize you don't have to come up with all the money yourself, making a real film becomes more approachable. (sorry cracker, I know it's taking me forever to get around to that investment post)

All you really need to get started is a very solid business plan, a very solid script, and a lot of energy. The rest of it is basically presentation and math.
 
Nate North said:
The one thing that really helps these numbers become less daunting is the fact that no indie filmmaker is having to come up with 3 mil of their own money. Show investors that you have a solid plan for ROI, and they will give you the money (sometimes, if they like you).

So what I'm saying is that the guy who made a $100,000 film, and the guy that made a 3 million dollar film both started out with 100k. One just spent a lot more time on business, investment, and marketing.

Once you realize you don't have to come up with all the money yourself, making a real film becomes more approachable. (sorry cracker, I know it's taking me forever to get around to that investment post)

All you really need to get started is a very solid business plan, a very solid script, and a lot of energy. The rest of it is basically presentation and math.
Click to expand...

I don't know why anyone would ever agree to invest in a low budget indie. I understand that they do, obviously, and I'm glad they do,
but isn't the likelihood of getting ANY money back basically slim and none? I don't have stats, but intuitively it seems like about the worst investment a person might make.
 
brianluce said:
I don't know why anyone would ever agree to invest in a low budget indie. I understand that they do, obviously, and I'm glad they do,
but isn't the likelihood of getting ANY money back basically slim and none? I don't have stats, but intuitively it seems like about the worst investment a person might make.
Click to expand...

Oh, no, it can be very profitable. As long as we're talking about the same "low budget" Scanner Darkly spent 8 mil with a turnover of 24 mil. That's a good investment, and a low budget. (spiderman was 30x that)

In terms of micro budget, or worse shorts, you are basically setting a pile of your money on fire. Unless my goal was to make some kid popular with his friends, I would never invest in a micro budget.

At 3 mil, I suspect Super Troopers was quite successful.
 
Nate North said:
Oh, no, it can be very profitable. As long as we're talking about the same "low budget" Scanner Darkly spent 8 mil with a turnover of 24 mil. That's a good investment, and a low budget. (spiderman was 30x that)

In terms of micro budget, or worse shorts, you are basically setting a pile of your money on fire. Unless my goal was to make some kid popular with his friends, I would never invest in a micro budget.

At 3 mil, I suspect Super Troopers was quite successful.
Click to expand...

Scanner Darkly had Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson. It was animated
and adapted from a Philip Dick Novel -- Sci Fi equivalent of Shakespeare. The got all that for 8 million dollars?

If so, the banks for Buried, 127 Hours, and Super Troopers should do an audit.
 
I think alot of the actors on scanner darkly did it for reduced wages that is the only way they could get it for such cheap prices. Just one actor could cost as much as their budget.
 
brianluce said:
Scanner Darkly had Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Winona Ryder and Woody Harrelson. It was animated
and adapted from a Philip Dick Novel -- Sci Fi equivalent of Shakespeare. The got all that for 8 million dollars?

If so, the banks for Buried, 127 Hours, and Super Troopers should do an audit.
Click to expand...

They got all that plus 45 animators working for 18 months.

Good actors don't cost as much as people think. Remember, actors inflate their prices heavily in the media, to keep a good bargaining position. Behind closed doors, Julia Roberts will take 3 mil for a 25 day shoot.

But TMZ will keep telling you 30 million a role.

As you just pointed out, the proof is in the final budget. In Scanner, they have 3 known film actors and I doubt it was more than half the budget. So you're basically looking at a situation where you can go to an investor and say, Canoe Reeves will be in our movie for 1.5 mil, and we can put him on the movie poster.

See, it's quite possible to make a pitch that sounds feasible, when you look at a lead actor that has gotten 500 mil in dvd rentals alone, and say, all we have to do is return 5 mil.
 
Nate North said:
They got all that plus 45 animators working for 18 months.

Good actors don't cost as much as people think. Remember, actors inflate their prices heavily in the media, to keep a good bargaining position. Behind closed doors, Julia Roberts will take 3 mil for a 25 day shoot.

But TMZ will keep telling you 30 million a role.

As you just pointed out, the proof is in the final budget. In Scanner, they have 3 known film actors and I doubt it was more than half the budget. So you're basically looking at a situation where you can go to an investor and say, Canoe Reeves will be in our movie for 1.5 mil, and we can put him on the movie poster.

See, it's quite possible to make a pitch that sounds feasible, when you look at a lead actor that has gotten 500 mil in dvd rentals alone, and say, all we have to do is return 5 mil.
Click to expand...

And it doesn't carry the cache it used to, but a star of that magnitude is automatic domestic and international distribution probably with a guarantee you can use to secure loans on the front end.
 
As my friend said, there are a lot of actors willing to work under the terms of a SAG ultra low budget agreement, which makes them affordable for small patatoes as long as they like the script and what you are doing.

You may not get A-List actors, but names such as Robert Vaugh, Laranzo Lamis, and Lance Harkenson who are known to work in small patatoe productions do help get distributors attached.
 
Last edited:
Rayandmigdalia said:
"BURIED" had one actor inside of a coffin for 90-minutes...also cost $3-million.
"127-HOURS" (the guy who had to cut his own hand off while rock climbing)...cost $18-million.

Somebody got a new Mercedes out of it...
Click to expand...

It's cause the hired famous actors, and possibly famous directors, or at least 127 hours, had Danny Boyle. If they would have hired an unknown director and actor, they could have done it for a few thousand at most, mostly spent on the price of plain tickets to a canyon to shoot. Or you could drive for quite cheaper.
 
Last edited:
Rayandmigdalia said:
"BURIED" had one actor inside of a coffin for 90-minutes...also cost $3-million.
"127-HOURS" (the guy who had to cut his own hand off while rock climbing)...cost $18-million.

Somebody got a new Mercedes out of it...
Click to expand...

It's cause the hired famous actors, and possibly famous directors, or at least 127 hours, had Danny Boyle. If they would have hired an unknown director and actor, they could have done it for a few thousand at most, mostly spent on the price of plain tickets to a canyon to shoot. At least I'm guessing this is why.
 
harmonica44 said:
It's cause the hired famous actors, and possibly famous directors, or at least 127 hours, had Danny Boyle. If they would have hired an unknown director and actor, they could have done it for a few thousand at most, mostly spent on the price of plain tickets to a canyon to shoot. Or you could drive for quite cheaper.
Click to expand...

It's totally imposssible for Hollywood to make a movie for under about 2 million. It's very difficult to make a "professional" film for under 500K. You have to consider insurance, equipment rental, the fact every person on that set down to the guy making coffee is being paid. Then you start talking about Post production. Union editor SCALE is about $2600 a week for a 5 day 56 hour week. That's scale, so he's either s friend, a newer editor, etc... who is working for the bare minumum. A decent color correction suite can run in the $500 a an hour range. So if the guy blows through it and doesn't do anything fancy you're talking 8K or 10K for color correction. Then you've got audio post with a union sound editor. Scale again is in the $2500 a week range. It will take minimum a couple of weeks of sound editing, etc... etc.... etc.....
 
So that begs the eternal question, "How do we, as broke assed indie film makers, make professional looking/sounding movies for the little bucks?"
 
There's likely a gross broad stroke about what "indie" means.

Technical indie means less than 50% of budgetary support comes from a major/mini-major studio. Now, "when" in the process they do get on board kinda makes a big diff to me, but maybe not to Hoyle.

Generally regarded indie means bozos with less cash than skill behind a FlipHD asking their "Dude" buddy friends to put on some grey facepaint, drizzle some red Kayro about their fresh torn t-shirt, and have them run through their forest behind their house while other buddies dressed in BDUs chase 'em with nerf guns painted black.

Don't EVEN ask me about the audio, if you can call it that.

So "How do we, as broke assed indie film makers, make professional looking/sounding movies for the little bucks?"

We don't.
I don't think you can make a professional dingleberry in a commode with less than $1,000,000.
WTH are you going to shoot with that?
WhoTH is going to market that into how many theaters?

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN.
We've all heard about it.
Has Rutger Hauer in it and everything.
Isn't RobRod associated with this somehow?
Know how many theater's this little $3m gem got into?
http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Hobo-with-a-Shotgun-

Well screw me in a new lightbulb.
HowTH am I supposed to make sh!t with $50k?

>$2k to <$2M = No man's land.
Many will spend.
Few will see a return.

Indie means independent from a studio.

Indie doesn't mean idiots with a camera recording more idiots running around the forest.

"It's all praaaaack-tice. It's all edu-KAAAA-shunal".
 
Lucky Hardwood said:
So that begs the eternal question, "How do we, as broke assed indie film makers, make professional looking/sounding movies for the little bucks?"
Click to expand...

If you're interested, take a look at this trailer and tell me what you think of the production values:

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1973656857/

Now the bad news:

I've been making films for 33 years, so have a little bit of practice in making stuff look halfway decent. Also, I live in a town that is population: 10,000 so there is literally no one here with the right skills who can help me, which meant I had to do everything: write, produce, direct, light, shoot, edit, effects, color grade, and do all the sound post. That saved a huge amount of money, but took FOREVER.

So that's the trade-off; I absolutely DO NOT recommend doing it my way, but it can be done.

(All of this assumes you like the look of the thing. If you don't, then just ignore this :) )
 
Last edited:
You have $21,500 of your own money in that film? That is a hell of a lot more than I could raise on my salary. How do you do it? My plan to get my flick made is a semi-long term deal. I am looking for companies that can make the merchandise to go along with the movie and print the posters. I am going to shoot two versions of the poster, one for the R rated regular release and one for the Unrated release. I will offer merchandise to various levels of supporters on indiegogo and my own website. I'm looking to raise $5,000 to shoot three or four scenes that I can upload to vimeo and youtube with a link to my website where, for a small fee, you can view the uncut versions of those scenes. The goal is to raise enough money and exposure through the single scenes and merchandise to film the rest of the movie. Bear in mind that this is not any ground breaking piece if cinema, it is aimed directly at the mainstream market and is almost formulaic.
 
If want to make your first movie, and make a possible name for yourself, do not make a formulaic movie. The cheaper the production values, the more people will look to original story. So you have to have a great original story, to overcome cheap production values. At least that's the way it seems to be. You can a movie look and sound good, if you have a good DP and soundman who also are willing to work for free or very low pay if they believed in your project. I wouldn't get ahead oh myself, and release different versions of the movie, R rated, and Unrated, cause getting a rating will cost money, but can be done, if it will help get distribution, but that comes way later.
 
Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC said:
I agree with all these points.

But, let me shift the angle here by the argument that there are countries overseas that like American movies. And, why do consumers like me take a chance on import movies like Bloody Mallory and Immortal? Bloody Mallory is from France and dubbed in English. I forget where Immortal comes from. Both movies have unknown actors to an audience over here. And yet, I took a chance on it and I'm sure some others have too.
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the 2004 Immortal? That was also produced in France although it's an English-language movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_(2004_film)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top